Is the reinvention of downtown Cairo Egypt’s most controversial comeback?

Karim Shafei likes to tell visitors that he has a short commute. The chairman of Al Ismaelia property investment fund lives within walking distance of his office down a pedestrian alley in central Cairo. Known as Kodak Passage because it was once home to several photographic studios, it leads to the striking Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue, which was inaugurated in 1908. On the surrounding streets, several buildings are covered with scaffolding, while others have already been given a facelift. This bustling district, which locals refer to as wust al-balad (“city centre” in Arabic), is undergoing a transformation and Shafei is at its heart. Since Al Ismaelia was founded in 2008, it has bought and renovated dozens of properties here, setting the tone for a revival that is gathering pace. “He’s Mr Downtown,” says one resident of the area.

Cairo, the sprawling home of 23 million people, is a city in flux. In its hinterland rise new satellite cities, including a purpose-built administrative capital and suburbs of residential compounds. Centuries-old cemeteries have been demolished to make way for roads and bridges. On the banks of the Nile, beloved houseboats have been dismantled and public gardens replaced by concrete walkways. All of this has taken place under the tightly controlled rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who rose to Egypt’s presidency about a year after leading a military coup in 2013. The changing face of Cairo since then has not been without controversy but the regeneration of its downtown is a particularly sensitive issue because of the place that it has long occupied in the Egyptian imagination.

“Downtown is unique,” says the denim-jacketed Shafei as he takes Monocle on a walking tour of some of Al Ismaelia’s properties. It is mid-morning and the air is filled with a cacophony of car horns. A man cycles past, balancing on his head an enormous tray piled high with freshly baked bread. The core of downtown Cairo’s architectural landscape – where crumbling belle époque façades can be spotted alongside later structures that nod to art deco and modernist influences, as well as neo-everything, from pharaonic to Renaissance and Ottoman – dates back to a modernisation drive launched by 19th-century Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha. Influenced by Haussmann’s Paris, the resulting avenue-lined quarter became an international social and cultural centre of gravity. Numerous films and novels were set in and around the coffee houses, cinemas, theatres and clubs dotting its elegant boulevards.